Cultural Migrants and Optimal Language Acquisition

Fanny Forsberg Lundell is Associate Professor of French Linguistics at Stockholm University. Besides publishing extensively on formulaic language in French and Spanish as second languages, with a particular focus on high-level proficiency, she also works on pragmatics, conversation analysis and spoken language in general. Recently, her work includes psychological perspectives on high-level L2 attainment.Inge Bartning is Professor Emerita of French at Stockholm University. She has taught and published in the domain of French syntax, semantics and pragmatics. In the last two decades her main interest has been in French L2 acquisition, in particular the domain of developmental stages, advanced learners and ultimate attainment of morphosyntax, discourse and information structure.

• Fanny Forsberg Lundell and Inge Bartning: Introduction: Cultural Migrants – Introducing a New Concept in SLA ResearchFOCUS ON CULTURAL MIGRANTS1. Anna Gudmundson and Camilla Bardel: Beyond Nativelike? The Lexical Profile of a Cultural Migrant in Italy 2. Fanny Forsberg Lundell and Inge Bartning: Successful Profiles in High-Level L2 French: C’est un choix de vie 3. Amanda Edmonds and Catherine Guesle-Coquelet: Reported Use and Perception of tu and vous among Less Integrated and Highly Integrated Anglophone Cultural Migrants in France4. Britt Erman and Margareta Lewis: L2 English Vocabulary in a Long-Residency Swedish Group Compared to a Group of English Native SpeakersCULTURE AS A DECISIVE FACTOR IN L2 ATTAINMENT5. Chloe Diskin and Vera Regan: Migratory Experience and Second Language Acquisition among Polish and Chinese Migrants in Dublin, Ireland6. Kate Hammer and Jean-Marc Dewaele: Acculturation as the Key to the Ultimate Attainment? The Case of Polish-English Bilinguals in the UK7. Gisela Granena: The Role of Sociopsychological Factors in Long-term L2 Achievement of L1 Chinese Learners of L2 Spanish8. Fanny Forsberg Lundell and Inge Bartning: Concluding Chapter: What Can SLA Learn From Cultural Migrants?

This volume introduces us to a new concept - the ‘cultural migrant’ - in order to investigate linguistic variation and long-term attainment among L2 users with a genuine desire to integrate into a new culture. The editors and contributors succeed in enlivening and complicating the age debate through a holistic view of the individual, and a renewed emphasis on acculturation, both needed to decisively move critical period research forward.